POETRY: ADAM DICKINSON

THERMOGRAPHY  

37.3℃ Internal temperature, 66 heartbeats per minute, Oxygen Consumption (Litres per minute) 0.29 

​Right Middle Cerebral Artery Velocity (cm per minute) 64.5; Left Middle Cerebral Artery Velocity (cm per minute) 61.7 ​

In the laboratory, I’m wearing what looks like a wetsuit. It’s filled with small pipes that circulate heated water over my body. When they turn it on, I feel seductively warm—a hot tub with people I have just met. But this sensation soon recedes, like the feeling of the rectal thermometer which I no longer notice as I shift my position under the thermal blankets to stare at the ceiling and keep to myself. I am roasting. I am overcoming all possible mechanisms for my body to cool itself. Under the wetsuit and a raincoat and a reflective blanket, I am exceeding a wet bulb temperature of 35℃. This is the point at which a human body cannot cool itself by sweating. Even healthy people sitting in the shade will die within six hours. In the city of Bandar Mahshahr, Iran, in July 2015, a temperature of 46℃, combined with 50% humidity, approached this level of survivability. As the climate changes, this threshold will be breached in many parts of the world. I don’t notice much discomfort after the initial surge of heat. But slowly I start to sweat. It has nowhere to go. I lower my arm at one point and the sweat pours from my sleeve with the pressure and arc of a respectably urgent piss. My face is red. My mind wanders and fixates feverishly. My heartrate goes up. The velocity of the blood flow through my left and right cerebral arteries decreases. The volume of my carbon dioxide uptake increases. I undergo cognitive tests at regular intervals. My reaction time decreases as I get hotter, but for some reason, later, as I begin to lose control, it improves substantially, surpassing my baseline scores. I am anxious. I want to pull the blankets off. I want to pull the wires out. The experiment ends.
​

​INFERNO

38.3℃ Internal temperature, 107 heartbeats per minute, Oxygen Consumption (Litres per minute) 0.26 
​
Cognitive test: Assemble all occurrences of the word “heat” in Dante’s Inferno; Working Memory Overall Reaction Time (ms) 963.5 

To eternal
shades
in heat
and frost
impetuous
on account
of adverse
heats
by which
they so
intensely
heated
were
and more
and less
the monuments
are heated
thus was
descending
the eternal
heat
or feel
the heat
for which
I pay
the reckoning
in this heat
a sudden
intercessor
was the heat
then they
stuck close
as if
of heated
wax
as leans
in heating
platter
against
platter
​

​ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

​Thermal camera images by Gary J. Hodges. Thanks to Dr. Stephen Cheung, Phillip Wallace, and Scott Steele for assisting with testing and analysis at the Environmental Ergonomics Laboratory at Brock University.

Adam Dickinson is the author of four books of poetry. His latest book, Anatomic (Coach House Books), involves the results of chemical and microbial testing on his body. His work has been nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and the Raymond Souster Award. He was also a finalist for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Poetry Prize and the K.M. Hunter Artist Award in Literature. He teaches Creative Writing at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.